


stranger's eyes

by literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ahch-To, Dreams, Finn-centric, Flashbacks, Force Ghosts, Force Visions, Force-Sensitive Finn, Kreia was right, M/M, Not Happy, Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 00:17:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10685862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte/pseuds/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte
Summary: two songs inspired this[x][x]you told me not to run/ that I would just be blinded/ by the sun/ you tried to comfort me/ said any other day I like/ that I could leave.all of the trees were in light/ they had no faces to show/ I saw a sign in the sky/ seven swans, seven swans, seven swans/ I heard a voice in my mind/ I will try, I will try, I will try.





	stranger's eyes

**Author's Note:**

> you dont need to know who kreia is to understand this but if you, like me, are deeply invested in star wars lore, see the note at the end.

The grass tickles his neck. Finn, drowsy, content to lay there forever, blinks against the sunlight and droops his arm over his face to shield his eyes from it. He wets his lips and thinks of the berries he found on the path through the woods. Dark red, like the skies of Dathomir. Tasted awful, like the fish from the spring nearby, but they were better than another breakfast of ration bars and there were enough untouched by insects that he could fill his stomach with them. Now that he has a choice, he would be happy to never eat another ration bar in his life.

He does not hear Ren approach camp. He senses it, faintly, with increasing dread. Ren did not eat the berries. Luke warned Finn that he would be like this, that he believes the fasting makes him stronger, but he hasn’t eaten in days. Part of him hopes that Ren will pass out at some point and they’ll have to return to Luke empty-handed and never see each other again, but he also hopes it stays this way, the ghostly figure of Ren trailing ahead of him just far enough so he can forget about him and enjoy the feeling of sunlight on his skin. The sweetness of flowers in the air. The warm nights, the soft mornings, the woods and the breeze and the strange little insects chattering around him.

In the shade of a tree, breathing so quietly he could be asleep, Ren meditates. Finn gets up before nightfall and goes down to the spring to catch himself dinner. He comes back with two fish, and Ren doesn’t ask for one. Finn eats alone by the campfire, the smoke curling into the darkening sky, and then folds himself into his sleeping bag. Ren does not move, except for his eyes under their lids, darting back and forth like the fish under the surface of the water. Every so often his hands twitch, and Finn tries not to make it obvious how much it disturbs him, how often he sneaks glances at Ren to make sure he isn’t going to jump up and strangle him while he’s unaware.

In his dreams Finn sees that woman again - long hair loose down her back, white as bone, white as the moon, with empty eyes, coming out of the ocean to whisper a secret in his ear, _There is only you, there is only you_ \- that has come to him every night since he fell down in the snow on Starkiller Base with a wound that eclipsed every other pain he has ever felt. He wakes up like he’s back on Jakku, with a moist forehead and the pits of his nightshirt drenched with sweat. He looks over at Ren, almost expecting to see him collapsed on the ground, his Jedi robe given to him by Luke for the journey splayed around him as if to escape the burden of his lifeless body, but he is standing a few feet from camp and staring into the horizon at the rising sun, very much alive.

His hood is pulled down, and his hair is windblown and wild. The sky, a tender pink, spills around his shoulders. The robe is pulled taunt around the hard muscle of his back. Finn wonders what he would do if he woke up one day and found Ren standing over him, if he could defend himself, if he could get to the blaster on his belt in time. If he would not hesitate. His spine aches with an old hurt. He slowly gets out of his sleeping bag and rolls it into a ball. Ren packed up the rest of their camp before he woke up, so he has time to scavenge for food. He finds another bush with the berries from before, eats what he can and saves his rations for later. He does not know how long they will be here. Ren has not moved by the time he gets back to camp.

They continue north, at a steady but unhurried pace. The Falcon is far behind them now, waiting at the southern end of the island for Han Solo’s son and the Big Deal to return. The trees here are massive and teeming with life, and Finn draws what he sees in his journal as they walk under the canopy. Creatures like Loth cats with more legs than necessary prowling after blue-orange striped lizards. Things with delicate wings that leave a honey-sweet smell behind them, with tiny translucent bodies that swell to the size of his fist when threatened. He can’t wait to show Rey the drawing he made of the two-headed animal he saw, briefly, before it saw him watching and ran away. He thinks Luke would be proud that he’s become so inquisitive and unafraid. Perhaps that’s why he chose Finn to go with Ren, to show him more of the world Luke’s been isolated on and Finn’s been isolated from. But Finn could do that with anyone, anyone at all. It did not have to be Ren. Did it?

Finn can smell the sea. Senses it miles before they reach it. The cool wind touches his cheek like a mother’s caress, one he cannot remember. Black wet sand stretches out like a sleeping panther along the shore. That night they make camp at the edge of the cliffs, above the water that churns and cleaves itself against the rocks. Finn eats a nutrient bar and goes out to look for something to hunt. When he returns, Ren is gone.

The surf gnashes its waxy teeth as clouds gather above to watch. Finn calls out Ren’s name, his own voice unrecognizable. _Ren? Ren?!_ Like the reverse of the worst day of his life - calling for Ren to come back, not because he has taken someone, but because someone has taken him. Finn does not know why his mind immediately goes to that. The woman in his dreams lingers like a wraith, _there is only you, only you._

It is raining when he finds Ren at the base of the cliffs. He is freezing cold. Terrified and relieved in equal measure. Ren’s face is ghastly in this half-light, eyes like pilot lights in a storm. What would Luke do if he lost Ren? If he ran away, if he became Kylo Ren again - would Luke hate Finn? Would Rey hate him? Would Leia, Poe, the resistance? Where would he go if Ren betrayed them again? What future would be destroyed by the smallest mistake now?

He feels pathetic when Ren looks at him and says, “You were calling my name.”

“You were gone!”

“Yes. I was gone.”

Then he feels a spark of anger. “You can’t just leave like that! You can't do that!”

“I found something.”

“Is it - ?” Finn glances over Ren’s shoulder, to see if he has possibly found an entrance, perhaps a cave leading where they must go.

“No. Look.” He holds his prize out. In the palm of his hand is a shell, shaped like a crescent moon.

He doesn’t know what to do. Ren keeps holding it out, his hand shaking ever so slightly. Finn stares at the shell, his face, back at the shell and says, “It’s...pretty?”

Ren looks at him with what Finn presumes is contempt. Wordlessly, Ren pockets the shell. It is the only exchange they’ve had that’s lasted more than a sentence since they parted from Luke and Rey.

They get back to camp at dusk and Ren eats with him. They don’t talk about it. He eats little and immediately goes to bed. The day left him rattled, so Finn struggles to fall asleep. His muscles are sore from the hike up and down the cliffs looking for Ren. The tide roars until its throat is raw and then the moon takes it in its arms and smothers it. The insects trill in the grass, filling the silence with their song. He closes his eyes and, unknowingly, reaches out to Ren.

_“Will he forgive me?” Ben asks, in a small voice. His face is blotchy and his eyes are red. He cries like any nine year old would when they think they have committed the worst crime in the universe._

_“Of course he will, Ben,” Leia says. She smells like lavender and her hand is soft on his shoulder, but she does not look him in the eye. She is scared of him, even now, and he is acutely aware of this. It makes him cry harder._

_“Do I have to give it back?”_

_She looks at the handful of candy he has stolen, clenched in his tiny fist. “We’ll go back together and pay for it.”_

_“I already ate some.”_

_“That’s okay. We can still pay for it.”_

_“I made him forget me.”_

_“You made him...what?”_

_“I took his candy and made him forget me,” Ben says. “It was easy.”_

_In the years to come he’d always think of how her face changed when he said that._

_He is fifteen when he asks Luke, “Will he forgive me?”_

_“That is up to him,” Luke says, “not me. I cannot decide for him what he feels.”_

_“What about you?”_

_“What do you mean?”_

_“Are you mad at me?”_

_“No, I’m not mad. I just know that you can do better than this. You need to control yourself. You cannot lash out like that again during practice. Balance yourself, with the Force.”_

_“Is the Force good?”_

_Luke looks at him intensely. Ben fidgets under his gaze._

_“The Force is neither good nor evil. It depends on who is using it. It depends on you.”_

_“Would the universe be better if there was no Force? Would we be better without it?”_

_“What do you mean? If there were no Jedi?”_

_“No - or maybe, yeah, I do mean that. What if there were no Jedi? No Sith? No Force?”_

_"What made you think of this?" It is unspoken but Ben hears it underneath, the first suspicion. Who made him think of this?_

_"I want to know. I'm curious... of what you think."_

_Luke is quiet for a long time. “It is not possible to live without the Force. We flow from the Force and the Force flows from us.”_

_“I think,” Ben says, “I hate the Force.”_

_Luke looks at him the same way Leia had._

Finn opens his eyes. The white-haired woman is coming to tell him something. He can hear her chanting, _you, you, you,_ and this time he walks out to her. If he had the words for it, he would say them. He would scream them. All he has is a sense of the truth lodged in his throat. She has tried to tell so many others. She tried to tell Snoke, who twisted her words and twisted Ren. Now she tells him.

In the morning the sun is a yolk in the grey sky and the ground is wet and muddy. It's going to be miserable walking in the woods. Ren is crouched by the fire, shivering, poking at the smoldering ashes with a stick while he eats his rations.

He looks at Finn when he wakes up. His hair falls around his eyes, casting a shadow over his face, but it is hard not to see the scar. It sucks the breath out of Finn every time he has the misfortune to notice it, the way the light catches in the curve of dead tissue like a star throwing a long and dark and terrible spear through space.

“I hate you,” says Finn. His voice comes out smaller than he expected.

Ren chews quietly and swallows. He brushes his hair behind his ears but it falls back over his eyes the next moment. He says, “I know.”

They follow along the cliffs, heading east. Around midday it begins to drizzle, and Finn has to put away his journal. He wants to draw the ocean - the foaming mouth of the waves, the light catching on its white teeth, the tongue flicking out to taste the sand. He thinks about the day Rey met Luke, and how he felt it, even in stasis. Felt the balance shifting. Across the ocean on a little island she, at this moment, must be training with Luke. Luke and his heavy blue eyes. He thinks about the way Kylo Ren looked at him and the bloody handprint on his helmet, as the village burned around them. All those voices crying out and silenced at once.

Every so often the clouds part and the sun breaks through. The insects are quiet today. Another one of those two-headed creatures crosses their path, and it makes a high keening noise when it sees them, then darts into the bushes. One head looks at Ren and one head looks at Finn. It has four eyes like slits of bleached white stones in the coastal sun.

Finn feels it when they are close. It hums within him, like his bones carry a memory of this land. He trembles with its weight. Ren, of course, does not say anything. They walk together, not speaking to one another, knowing silently that the other feels it, that they have found it at last. Centuries ago they might have found Finn as a child and he would have lived here, trained here, dedicated his life to the Jedi code. He would have built a lightsaber with his own two hands. He would have known his parents, but not for long. Perhaps he would have fallen victim to that fatal flaw of the Jedi. What passion would lead him to it?

But nature has reclaimed the ruins. A stream cuts through its belly, water gurgling like blood in a dying man’s throat, and vines stretch vein-like over its exposed rib cage, a maze of abandoned halls and statues with names no one alive would recognize. Statues with faces no one loves anymore. The wind from the sea touches everything with its cold fingers except for the crevices in which dust has settled so thick it has become a second skin. Finn shivers. He feels cold and tired and angry, all at once. The ancient Jedi enclave is an empty and dead labyrinth that he wants nothing to do with. There is nothing left for them to find here. There never was.

“Why you?” he says suddenly. “Why did you get to be a Jedi and not me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you even know how many lives you’ve ruined? Is that what the Force wants? Is this?”

“You are,” Ren says, “everything I was supposed to be.”

“I hate you.” Now that he has started he cannot stop. “I hate you so much. I hate being around you. I hate when you look at me. I hate the First Order. I hate the Force. I hate you! I hate everything you are and everything you’ve done!”

Ren says nothing. Finn stands there, chest heaving, hands clenching and unclenching at his side. He does not know where he found this anger inside him, but he does not want to let it go. The rain falls in sheets on top of them. Ren’s hair is plastered to his face. He has no right to look this miserable, no right at all.

“Why didn’t you want the shell?”

“What?”

“I wanted to give it to you,” Ren says. “You didn’t take it. Why?”

“What? Why would I want that?”

Ren looks at the ground. “I wanted - something to give back to you.”

“Give me back my parents,” Finn says. “Give me back my childhood.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Give Luke his - his everything back. His hope.”

“I can’t do that. But you can.”

Finn turns his back on Ren. He turns his back on the ruins, and he walks until he cannot feel its presence inside him anymore. The rain has stopped by the time he finds a clearing in the woods, where he can sit in the grass by himself and think. He takes out his journal and begins to draw, wondering how Luke will look at him now. He wishes Rey was here with him. He wishes he had a home to miss, to dream of returning to. Instead he dreams of a dead woman who needs someone to finally listen to her, truly listen to her.

Hours pass. The clouds have retreated and the sunlight is languid and golden. He is grateful for this small mercy, a moment to himself. But eventually Ren finds him. Finn closes his journal and hides it in his jacket. Ren sits down gingerly besides Finn, who has to resist the urge to scoot away.

“You asked me why I got to be a Jedi instead of you,” Ren says. “Do you want to be a Jedi?”

“I don't know,” Finn admits.

“Why not?”

Finn dodges the question. “Why did Luke forgive you?”

“What makes you think he has?”

The wind breathes around them, carrying the smell of wet dirt and the ocean. It lets out a gentle whistle as it plays through the trees. They sit there quietly for a while, listening to it. Ren takes out the shell and turns it over in his palm. Finn watches as he throws it into the air and holds it there, brow furrowed in concentration. Once it gets above the treeline he surrenders it to gravity, and Finn, instinctively, reaches out to catch it. He does not have to touch it - some power within him obeys, and it hovers in midair at his command. He lets it float to the ground like a leaf between him and Ren, and this time he takes it.

“You could be, if you wanted.”

“What?”

“A Jedi. You could train with Rey.”

“I could.”

“Will you?”

“Will Luke want to train me?”

“Why wouldn't he?”

“I don’t know.”

“That's not the problem. The problem is you don't want to be trained by him, do you? You don't want to be a Jedi.”

“I don't know,” Finn repeats. “I never thought this would happen. That I would be - capable of something more. I don't know what I'm supposed to do.”

“You hate the Force.”

“I was angry at - everything. At you. I needed something to hate.”

“You need hate,” Ren says. “Do you know why I hated my father? I'll tell you why. He was afraid of me. I was his son and he was afraid of me. So I hated him.”

Finn scowls at him. “At least you had a father to hate. I can't remember my parents. I don't even know if they're alive. What if I... what if I have siblings out there? Would they remember me? Would they recognize me if they saw me? I can't think about that. If I do, then, then... It's not fair. What is the Force, if it allows this to happen?” _If it allows Kylo Ren to exist?_

Ren considers him. He says, more to himself than to Finn, “Will he forgive me?”

“Who? Your father? You should have asked him that first.”

“No,” Ren shakes his head. He leans closer to Finn. “Snoke.”

An icy-feeling fear takes shape in the pit of his stomach. “What do you mean?”

“I could take you to him. He could teach you. We could train together. I could give you that,” Ren says, almost feverishly, “I abandoned him but I could come back. It's not too late. Don't you understand? He saved me. Snoke could save you too, teach you what Luke would be afraid to teach you about the ways of the Force. He could teach you!”

“To be like _you?”_

Ren opens his mouth to continue but Finn lurches to his feet and stumbles away from him. Ren gets up to follow but Finn hisses at him, “Get away from me!”

He runs and he doesn't look back. The trees blur around him, suddenly strange and menacing where before they had been beautiful. He hears Ren calling out his name, _Finn! Finn!_ It is the first time Ren has said his name instead of the number and it makes him feel sick.

He keeps running until he cannot hear Ren’s voice in his head anymore. He doesn't realizes how far he's gone up to the moment he collapses in the sand, heart pounding, breathless and shaking. The water licks at his face, pulls in, pulls out, hesitant to touch him, never getting close enough. He stares at the sky and the clouds loosely gathered above him. He wonders if Rey is even training to be a Jedi with Luke, if that's what Luke wants at all. If he is afraid of watching another generation of dreams die out. If there could be Jedi again, after everything, if the Jedi deserve to come back. He wonders what she wants to be. And what does he wants to be?

He does not want to see the shape of Ren coming down the beach solemnly. He stands up, one hand on the blaster at his hip. He makes it obvious so Ren will know. He will not hesitate. He will never go back to the First Order.

“I scared you,” Ren says when he's close. “I'm sorry.”

“That's what you're sorry about? Scaring me?”

“Finn.” He flinches at the name Poe gave him, coming out of that mouth. “I didn't think about what I must look like to you.”

“And what do you think you looked like?”

“Like a monster,” Ren says. He steps closer and Finn backs away. “The monster who took you from your parents. The monster who took away the chance you deserved.”

“The chance for what?”

“You're not a traitor. I realize that now. It is the will of the Force. It took you. It takes everything it wants and it's up to us to make the universe whole again. It found you and it brought you to the First Order in the one way it knew how to break you. It brought you to Snoke as a stormtrooper. And it brought you to me. Finn,” Ren pleads, “the Force is a monster.”

“The Force isn't the one who murdered a village of innocents. Or razed down planets, whole planets, to get what it wanted,” Finn says spitefully. “The Force isn't the one who killed your father.”

“You still think of me as that monster.”

“You've done nothing to make me think otherwise.”

“I love you.”

A flock of birds pass above them, going north over the ocean. Finn wants to be with them, to fly away, but he does not know where he could go. He wants Rey with him. He wants Poe. Ren is looking at him with his dark, desperate eyes. The sun with rosy fingers brushes the dust off the surface of the sea and makes it shine again.

“Don't say that,” Finn says quietly.

“It's true. I know I do, I know you don't want me to, but it's true.” The corners of his lips twitch like he wants to smile but doesn't know how. “I have thought about you every night since the moment I saw you on Jakku. I was once afraid of you and what you could do. Yes, I was afraid of you. Now I know who you are. I have lain awake at night loving you. Every night, every night. You could leave me here, go back to Luke, train as a Jedi. But you're different than him. You're stronger. You cannot truly hate me if you took the shell -" 

“The shell?” Finn takes it out and holds it in front of him. “This?”

Before Ren can speak, Finn raises his arm up high and casts the shell as far as he can into the sea. Ren cries out and, to Finn’s bewilderment, throws himself into the water to retrieve it. He screams, a wild, guttural scream like Finn has cut his heart out.

He can feel the hand of the woman in his dreams on his shoulder. The wind has dried his lips; he wets them and thinks of dark red berries. The waves slough over Ren, trying to get its cold grip around him, to sink its teeth into his warm body. Ren screams and screams. Carefully Finn follows him into the water. He does not know what he will become. What he will change and be changed by in turn. But he knows what he must do first.

Water up to his waist. Everything moves slowly under its weight. The iron-salt smell of blood when his fist connects with Ren’s nose. The birds sinking over the hazy line where the sun touches the sea. The trees that have been here long before he was born and will be here long after him, watching.

Watching. Until there is only him.

**Author's Note:**

> in rebels, i believe the voice in the sith holocron at malachor was the part of kreia that was darth traya. like sidious with maul, snoke took kylo there, where he got the inspiration for his light saber, to show him the sith knowledge, perhaps finding a different holocron or through visions. i imagine kreia would not take kindly to her legacy being used in a grapple for power by the likes of the first order and would seek out through the force a more suitable acolyte. in the last jedi trailer we see finn in a kind of stasis, like meetra/the exile in the beginning of kotor 2. in this fic, kreia reached out to him then like she did with meetra and sort of nurtured his force powers to finally come out. finn has such potential as a character and i really hope "the jedi must end" doesnt fall solely on rey's shoulders, even if it turns out he isnt force sensitive.
> 
> i also think there is a massively underrated parallel between finn and kylo ren that i get way too passionate thinking about so here's a comic [[x]](http://sangamanga.tumblr.com/post/151907057350/a-short-comic-finn-and-kylo-ren-and-about-the) (not mine) that captures my feelings perfectly about the two characters. thanks for reading, please tell me what you think! im a gay nerd. wow.


End file.
